Chapter 16 #2
I swallowed hard. Maybe that was why Asher had warned me.
Stay strong. Okay. Avoid the urge to touch the magic stone.
Check.
A door stood ajar to our left, and Akari slipped inside a small room as I followed.
Oh. I stopped when I saw the setup, surprised that it resembled a tattoo parlor.
There was a black leather chair next to another chair, which was in front of a little table that held a few items. Ink, a long needle-looking thing, and the mortar and pestle, which held a white powder that I knew was the crushed Veil Stone after talking to Celia.
“Not what you expected?” Akari sat in her chair and motioned that I sit in the black leather one.
I shook my head.
“I expected, like, a circle of senior hunters chanting in some foreign language or something,” I told her honestly.
She grinned, chuckling. “That’s funny.”
I sat down, eyeing the white powder in the bowl and the black ink. “So it’s just like a tattoo?”
She nodded. “Yes, but the type of rune tattoo I place on you and how much Veil Stone I use will depend on what your body can handle.”
I swallowed hard.
“I heard you ingested a Celestis Astra wafer and didn’t get sick, so I’m guessing you can handle a lot. Now this isn’t like ingesting Veil Stone. Getting it into your bloodstream is different. I’m going to push your limits here, Stella, because ultimately, it’s going to make you a better hunter.”
“Okay.” I released a shaky breath.
She held my gaze. “How this works is that I use my gifts to sense how much Veil Stone you can take into your bloodstream and what runes you can permanently handle, but you are in control, Stella.”
My heart thundered in my chest. “Okay.”
She began to mix some of the white powder in with the black ink, and it swirled pearlescent and then glowing blue. “If it becomes too much, you can say stop.”
If what became too much? The tattoo pain?
“I’m good with pain. I broke my wrist in third grade and didn’t even cry,” I told her.
She gave me a look, a look that said I wasn’t understanding something. “That’s good for the pain from the needle, but the Veil Stone… Stella, do you know what it does once it’s in your bloodstream?”
I shook my head.
“It tests your strengths, which is good and helps me know how to choose your runes. I’m very sensitive to the Veil Stone. But it also magnifies your weaknesses and insecurities, searches them out. It’s a bit of an uncomfortable experience, especially for those who have had a hard life.”
My face fell.
Oh.
Oh!
No wonder Asher told me to be strong.
I sat up a little straighter then. It was going to search out my weaknesses? What were my weaknesses? I was told I talked too much in class once, but I doubted the Veil Stone would care about that.
“Ready?” She held up a long bamboo stick with a fanned-out cluster of more than twenty needles glued to the end. It looked like a sharp paintbrush, the kind you’d never want anywhere near skin.
“No fancy tattoo gun?” I asked nervously. “No disrespect, but that thing looks like a torture device.”
She smiled, calm and unbothered. “I told my mother the same thing when she did my hunter marks. I assure you, I am well trained in this style.”
I swallowed and held out my arm, nodding, because at this point, I just wanted it done.
“Ready,” I told her.
She closed her eyes, taking in a slow breath, and I noticed the runes on her arms began to glow ever so slightly. Then she reached down and traced a curved rune on her own arm with her fingernail. When she opened her eyes, I gasped and jerked back instinctively.
They were completely white.
She smiled softly. “I should have warned you. I’m sorry.”
Then she dipped the needle brush into the ink mixed with crushed Veil Stone and held it over my arm. She looked me in the eye one more time, and again I was startled by the way her pupils had vanished entirely, her gaze unfocused yet piercing at the same time. Was she in a trance?
“Remember you are in charge, Stella, but the more I push, the better a hunter you’ll be.”
I drew in a steadying breath. “I want to protect humans from the bloodsuckers. Push as hard as you can.”
She tapped my arm once with the needles, and I flinched at the sharp sting, my muscles tensing, but it was manageable. Then she tapped again, her head tilting slightly as if she were reading something invisible beneath my skin.
“That’s not too ba—” I began as pain seized my chest without warning, not on my arm but deep inside me, like invisible fingers squeezing my heart. Then the thoughts came.
You’ll never amount to anything.
The needle tapped again.
Everyone here will figure out you’re a waste of time and leave.
Tap.
Asher doesn’t like you. He wants something from you.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Even your own mother was evil, paying money to a vampire.
Tap. Tap.
Akari’s hand moved faster now, the needles rising and falling in a tight pattern as tears blurred my vision and a hollow loneliness opened in my chest so wide it felt bottomless.
Akari gasped, and I looked over at her. “I’ve never drawn this one before,” she said, then shifted position and began another. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The physical pain on my arm was nothing compared to the war in my head.
Linda liked me. She said I was her favorite. I fought the voices, clinging to the memory of Linda telling me that in her office.
She lied to give you hope. She’s already forgotten you.
Harper and Luna are only your friends because they feel sorry for you.
Nobody loves you. They never have. That’s why you’ll always be alone.
Orphan. Unwanted, unadoptable. Orphan!
The voice screamed so loud it tore into my soul, and the most shocking part? The voice was mine.
A sob tore out of me before I could stop it, and I glanced down to see three runes already etched into my skin.
Three.
How had time slipped like that? There was no way… I’d only been here a minute. Tops.
Akari’s eyes were still white as snow when she met my gaze. “You have so much power, Stella. You can handle more Veil Stone than anyone I’ve ever seen, but I can also see the fragility of your mind. There is a delicate balance between what the body can endure and what the mind can survive.”
Was she calling me weak?
I wiped my nose with my left hand, anger burning through the tears. “You have no idea how strong I can be,” I growled. “Give me more if my body will take it. You let me worry about my mind.”
She hesitated, studying me, then nodded.
Only three hunter marks felt wrong when I knew Celia had five and Asher had four.
Akari dipped the needles back into the Veil Stone ink and brought them down near my elbow this time.
The moment the ink pierced my skin, I was ripped out of the room and into a vision.
I stood in a graveyard, staring down at a gravestone, and my breath caught when I saw my own name carved into it. The dirt was freshly turned, dark and raw. A priest stood nearby with a Bible in his hands, scanning the empty chairs as if waiting for mourners who never came.
“Hello?” I asked, but he didn’t see me.
“Poor girl,” the priest murmured. “No one loved her enough to show.”
Agony ripped through my chest, and I knew at once that the Veil Stone was digging through the darkest parts of me, dragging every buried fear into the light.
“Fine!” I screamed at the sky. “I’m afraid no one loves me. That I’ll never be loved. So what? Is that all you’ve got?”
I was yanked back into the room and sucked into my body so hard it knocked the air from my lungs. I looked down to see Akari already working on a sixth rune.
Six? Where was the time going?
“Stella, your ability to hold Veil Stone and process it is incredible,” she said softly. “And these runes… I’ve never drawn some of these before. I’ve only seen them in books.”
My arm from elbow to wrist was nearly covered now.
“Your body can handle more.”
Fear coiled in my gut. More? The funeral alone had nearly broken me, but I wasn’t going to let fear dictate my future.
“Do more then,” I said hoarsely. “I can handle it.”
She poured more crushed Veil Stone into the ink, and I leaned back, eyes squeezing shut, bracing myself.
Nothing prepared me for what came next. The second the needles came down on my arm, I was pulled into another vision.
I was standing in a room with my mother and Emilie. Emilie wore a red dress and held a glass of champagne while my mother stood beside her, young and beautiful, just like in the photos I had of her. The sire’s eyes glinted silver as she barked orders.
“Prepare for tonight. My coven needs to feed, and there’s a new club on Fourth Avenue I want to try.”
“Yes, ma’am.” My mother bowed to her.
“No!” I screamed.
Emilie turned to me and laughed, delighted. “Oh, darling, don’t you get it by now? Mommy is working for me.”
“No,” I said, scanning the room for anything, anything at all to kill her with.
“Yes,” Emilie hissed, suddenly appearing inches from my face. “Don’t you wonder why she covered you in runes and left you at a human hospital instead of with hunters?”
“She was protecting me,” I sobbed.
“From whom?” Emilie mocked. “She was protecting you from hunters. Just like I asked her to.”
“No.”
Shadows spilled from the walls and ceiling, crawling closer as my mother turned her back on me.
“Get me out of here!” I screamed.
“Uh-oh.” Emilie laughed as the shadows wrapped around my throat. I collapsed, choking, the world dimming.
Stay strong, Stella.
Asher’s voice echoed faintly in my mind, but I couldn’t breathe.
Then pain exploded across my cheek.
I gasped and snapped back into my body and into the room, lungs burning. Akari was bent over me with shaking hands as black shadows danced across the ceiling above us and then retreated into nothingness.
She stared around the room, panting, terror written across her face.
Her eyes were back to their normal color, but she was looking at a rune on the top of my arm near my bicep-shoulder area with trepidation.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to keep going,” she said with fear in her voice.
I peered down at my arm and gasped. The entire thing was covered from wrist to shoulder. I counted them all.